Roberts analyses the skill and labour of post-1960s conceptual art and raises the issue of authorship in relation to these dynamics of art commodity production. He asserts that there is much intellectual confusion about what constitutes skill in art after the readymade.

Handicraft and associated skills in the production of art are historically accepted as a gauge of authorship. With the introduction of the readymade, the notion that the artist as author must be considered under other conditions of production; where handicraft executed by the artist is no longer the primary criteria.

The notion of the artist’s handicraft, once pivotal to the question authorship, is regularly negated in works involving waste materials. Pre-used, readymade objects may have been shaped and given social history at the hands of anyone. Objects that are ordinarily used and discarded require no specialised handicraft to render them waste. Sometimes artists reintroduce handicraft into the treatment of waste materials in art production, but in the case of objects rendered rubbish at the hand of the artist as art production, the concept of anti-craft is suggested; positioning the artist on an equal level with the viewer in terms of object production.

Roberts is keen to point out that the hand of the artist is not limited to handicraft and stresses the importance of the “emergent totipotentiality or multifunctionality of the hand in artistic labour.”

Rubbish utilised in art is a type of readymade in the sense of being “an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist”(1). Rubbish is very ordinary, but perhaps demands more of an elevation than the object with use-value or exchange-value. Rubbish has depleted its value, so the elevation to status of art could be considered a short-circuiting of this value system. This production of new function; the recycling of rubbish into art, creates new value where previously there was little or none, and, in a sense, is productive labour at its maximum in creating commodity from rubbish.

As well as considering Marx’s distinctions between productive and non-productive labour in the denotion of function and use-value of art, Roberts also distinguishes between intellectual labour and manual labour in discussing the readymade. “Modern artists are encouraged to think of themselves as active as artists beyond the ‘limited’ point of production, because, it is claimed, artists need to think of themselves as directly engaged in the mediation of the meanings of their work.”

The artist-as-producer, or author-as-producer as Benjamin writes(2), takes an active, exemplary and politicised position on their work from within and in response to the socio-political framework in which it was created. These are ideal conditions for autonomous authorship in the production of art. Skill and artistic labour, therefore, are no longer limited to commodity production exclusive of context, but rather must be considered in entirety of the interventions that render the readymade as art commodity.

This division between intellectual and manual labour and emphasis on context-specificity might position intellectual processes above manual processes in an artistic skills hierarchy. Processing rubbish in artworks often requires low levels of manual skill, although many exceptions do exist, and the artists’ skills are often found in the intellectual reconfiguration or recontextualisation of the objects. Perhaps this scenario is best seen in sculpture and assemblage in tradition of the readymade, as opposed to, say, photography and video where skill lies somewhere in the realm of manual labour but now more often than not in digital form.

If intellectual intervention supersedes manual labour in the treatment of rubbish as readymade in the production of art, can manual labour still play a part in the role of the artist, that is not delegated to assistants for example? I would argue that when artists do employ manual skills in art production, they do so consciously in an intellectual framework that acknowledges the histories and traditions of such skills in order to draw attention to the nature of manual labour itself and specific modes of production.

I’ve been working with Huddersfield duo Bristow & Lloyd on the first edition of a quarterly publication by art collective Black Dogs. The publication features contributions from Black Dogs and friends on the dual theme of Losing It / The Enemy. My contribution is the second image featured in this blog post.

Tonight is the launch at the Zephyr in Huddersfield.

Wednesday 30 January 2013, 6pm – Late.

Zephyr Bar, King Street, Huddersfield, HD1 2PZ.

Free entry

Join art collective Black Dogs for an evening of story sharing, musical turns, participative fun and multiple-choice quizzes in celebration of the publication of the first Black Dogs Quarterly. This edition is on the theme of ‘Losing It/The Enemy’ so the launch event acts as a timely opportunity to exorcise the last remnants of the post festive blues and indulge in some ale-accompanied group therapy. Bring your related stories, anecdotes, poems or songs and our compere will find a place for it in our ‘losing it’ open mic. Copies of the Quarterly and past Black Dogs publications will be available to browse and buy.

JD: The cathartic act of destruction – whether that be shredding, or impaling paper on a spike is a necessary part of the process for me. Especially if I am working form documents that I have had a previous relationships with- either in the writing of them or in connections to meetings or other bureaucratic processes.

Shredding is such a satisfying act – it changes the meaning of the paper for me, from the content on the page to the materiality of the paper itself – from a page to hundreds of snippets

I have many shredders that all have a unique ‘finger print’ often due to them wearing in different ways – having had too many pages forced through or how the odd staple may blunt one part of a blade.

I mainly use security level 2 and 3 shredders. Surplus Remains was created from the A3 folded flyers that were at first all cut into a5’s then shredded and then reassembled. This was aided by a group of artist friends who helped stick them all back together so they are in 10 meter lengths before being made into skeins ready for installation on site.

The works I create often involve many monotonous and repetitive actions. This is necessary to create works of scale that have a physical relationship to the viewer. It is also symbolic of the repetitive nature of work tasks. The work titled sur-plus remains is constructed from surplus leaflets from a previous event at South Hill Park. I am interested in publicity, and how it becomes a veil or signifier for the actual event. It is a virtual interpretation of something larger, that often in itself becomes the memorable imagery for the event.

AB: What context do you show your work in?

JD:Gallery. Although my first interest in paper was borne out of my Spike It project- where I placed 6ft spike files in to 7 different offices for workers to impale their waste paper.

AB: What happens to the materials/work afterwards?

JD: When used in temporary installations such as Rising Tides of Bureaucracy the same paper is recycled into other artworks eg, this paper later made an appearance in this interactive work in Brighton in 2011; Hard Graph, and again in later in Ubiquitous Materials in SHP. And most recently in Remains to be Seen “The security blanket of Beadle and Dom or necessary out processing of systems?”

JD: I did not set out to work with discarded documents- I started through my spike it project- I had been writing many documents, funding applications, reports etc when I decided to make a 6ft spike to impale the waste onto- this need was borne out of a need for a cathartic act. This led to the spike it project where office workers were invited to impale their waste paper. This then lead me to an interest in waste paper issues. The journey continued when I saw waste paper being loaded in containers

To go to Landfill oversees. I then visited waste recycling facilities here and saw the scale of the problem. For a while I became very excited at research on paper use/ waste production/ recycling etc across the world. However I have returned to using my own production of waste and of those whom I have a specific connection with. I have been known to visit some businesses to shred on their premises, especially at printers where I am enable to shred by colour!

AB: Do you have a preferred term for those materials?

JD: No.

AB: Where do you source your materials from?

JD: The material for Surplus Remains were the publicity documents for a previous exhibition at South Hill Park. This made the work site relevant. In other works I have used shredded paper form a variety of sources including, the waste from the Art Space Portsmouth office (where I am Vice Chair and therefore involved in the production of documents and bureaucracy). Other shredded paper comes from my office of past administrative work- on funding applications, art reports etc produced during working as a Creative Consultant. In another work, Mind Thought & Reality, I shredded a years notes from my daughters Philosophy Degree.

AB: What criteria do you have when sourcing your materials?

JD: Some of this is addressed above. I have a history of engaging audiences in my work. (This is an important part of my practice and I always choose as a starting point for my work a common action or object that everyone has a pre-existing relationship with. This is important to me to make my work accessible and to enable people to place their own emotional connection/ reading onto.) This means that through the process of making work I make connections with people – and from this comes many unsolicited donations of shredded paper or unwanted paperwork for me to use in creating works.

I have waiting in my studio a PDF document on Freud. I am waiting for a suitable and relevant site to create an installation with this.

LG: I work with discards because they would normally add familiarity and association to people. But at the same time, I like to break that association by juxtaposing the objects with other elements. The purpose is to bring new perspectives to the objects which seem so familiar to many. For example, in my piece Once Lost, I added a video into a found glove. The glove would have association to human and the fact that it was found on the street meant that someone had dropped it. It was abandoned and had a sense of loneliness to it. The video would, however, break the familiarity of the glove by bringing something new to the object. Having said, the video should also enhance the sense of loneliness to the glove, so they kind of work together though being very different.

AB: Do you have a preferred term for those materials?

LG: Found objects

AB: Where do you source your materials from?

LG: Daily lives eg egg shells and tea bags (they are the after products from consumption). Some are more site specific objects eg sea shells and sand that I collected from beaches.

AB: What criteria do you have when sourcing your materials?

LG: I didn’t have many criteria when I sourced the objects and therefore not everything that I picked have been used in my artwork. I do have criteria when I later turned the materials into artwork though, eg I would think about the geometry of the materials. Say egg shells are round or oval and so they work well with the shape of eyes. Whether certain things are aesthetically pleasing would also determine whether I would use them or not. And again, meanings and association of the objects would become important when they are finally turned into a piece of art. You can’t really strip away their identity.

AB: What processes do you apply to/with these materials?

LG: I like to transform found objects to make them interesting and to break rules. Showing found objects alone might not be all that interesting sometimes so I like to add my touch to them. I might apply other materials on top of the found objects such as paper, resin, printed images and texts etc.

AB: What context do you show your work in?

LG: Mainly gallery space.

AB: What happens to the materials/work afterwards?

LG: I would keep them for future exhibitions. Sometimes the fact that I keep them could mean further transformation in the future. The possibilities can evolve in accordance to my experience in time.